Varina meeting about dangerous chemicals answers some citizens' questions, while others remain

About 80 people who crowded into the Varina Area Library Wednesday for a meeting with local, state and federal officials had some of their environmental concerns eased but left with other questions unanswered.

The good news: a Varina sterilization plant identified last year by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as one of 23 nationally that emitted potentially dangerous levels of ethylene oxide has recently installed new controls that have dramatically reduced those emissions.

Still a concern to some residents: the fact that dangerous “forever” chemicals know as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were found in and near the White Oak Swamp Creek nearly two years ago – more than four years after their presence at current and former military sites at Richmond International Airport was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The meeting, conducted jointly by Henrico County, the EPA, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, was the first in-person opportunity for residents to hear collectively from the various agencies about both topics, which have been on the minds of Varina-area residents in recent months. (Henrico officials previously held meetings to address the PFAS concerns.) Following an initial 30-minute presentation, officials took audience questions for nearly an hour and then fielded additional individual questions at several tables in the room.

In June, the EPA hosted a webinar (attended by about 50 people) to provide details about the potential risk from ethylene oxide (or EtO) emissions at the Sterilization Services of Virginia plant at 674 Eastport Boulevard (near the Laburnum Avenue-Charles City Road intersection). At the time, officials said they estimated that if 1 million people living near the plan breathed the chemical (also know as EtO) 24 hours a day for 70 years, about 900 of them could develop breast or blood cancer – enough to warrant flagging the plant as one of the primary EtO emission offenders in the nation.

The chemical is used for a handful of purposes, most notably to sterilize medical equipment, which is its purpose at the SSOV facility. But EPA officials didn’t realize until recent years how potentially dangerous it could be, EPA spokesperson Madeline Beal told the crowd at the Varina Library Wednesday. Once they did, they identified more than 80 commercial facilities in the nation that produce high levels of EtO emissions (including one other in Henrico – the Central Virginia Health Network (Bon Secours Mercy Health) location in the Near West End, though it was not flagged as one posing risk to nearby residents). .

State and federal officials conducted an inspection of the SSOV facility in May to better determine the level of its emissions and associated risks to employees and nearby residents. They found that certain employees who handled the gas were at a much higher risk of developing cancer – perhaps as high as 1 in 117 if exposed over 35 years of employment, according to Beal.

With that knowledge in hand, DEQ officials began working with the facility, which this summer installed a new wet scrubber that has cut the facility's EtO emissions in half, according to DEQ Air Toxics Coordinator Patrick Corbett. (The new scrubber eliminates 99% of EtO emissions from the facility's largest emissions source, which produces half of its overall emissions, Corbett said).

Additional voluntary controls at the facility are possible, according to state officials. But with that new scrubber in place, the facility already is exceeding the stricter EtO emissions standards being proposed by the EPA as part of the Clean Air Act – standards that aren’t expected to be fully approved and in place for about two and a half more years, according to Beal.

Those new proposed regulations would – for the first time ever – implement federal monitoring for “fugitive” emissions (instances of the chemical escaping through doors or windows, for example) at facilities that use EtO, while also strengthening the requirements for stack emissions (those transmitted into the air through vents and chimneys). The act also would set continuous monitoring requirements for air control equipment.

“The first [two] of these will reduce risk to the communities,” an EPA official said during the June webinar. “The third one will allow us to make sure that risk is reduced and stays reduced over time.”

EPA officials believe that most of the risk posed by EtO emissions from sterilization facilities actually stems from fugitive emissions, Beal told the audience at Varina.

Concerns, however, remain from some members of the community who attended Wednesday’s meeting. One attendee asked why the EPA is proposing to monitor EtO levels only at the facilities and not at community locations nearby, such as schools.

Beal said that measuring at community sites would be challenging.

“Ethylene oxide is very hard to measure,” Beal said. “We find that the best way to measure it is at the source, where it’s going to be higher, and if we can know exactly how much is coming out at the source, then we are pretty confident that our models will help us know what is going on all around and not just at that one location.

“If you have a monitor at the school, and you get a hit, you don’t exactly what that means for the other facility across the street.”

Varina resident and local environmentalist Aileen Rivera asked state and federal officials what they had done to inform residents of the region about the presence of EtO, and EPA officials told her they had distributed a press release about the situation and held the webinar – responses that were met by some in the crowd with derisive chuckling.

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The issue of PFAS in the region goes back a bit farther than that of EtO.

Henrico and DEQ officials first became aware that PFAS existed in the White Oak Swamp Creek in late 2021, after testing conducted there by Newport News Waterworks (which supplies public water in the Newport News region) identified the chemicals there. NNWW officials had been tracing the source of PFAS – chemicals commonly used in variety of items, including firefighting foam, non-stick cookware, certain carpet, fabric and food packaging and other products that are designed to resist liquids and stains – they had discovered in their water supply.

Long-term exposure to, or ingestion of, elevated levels of PFAS can cause health issues ranging from cancer to birth defects, according to the EPA.

Within a few weeks, Henrico Department of Public Utilities officials announced that they would begin offering free testing of private wells in the area for the chemicals.

The issue, however, took a turn when the Citizen discovered in February 2022 that U.S. Department of Defense officials had known about the presence of PFAS at the site of current and former military operations at Richmond International Airport since 2017 but apparently never had communicated the results of their own testing there to the state or county.

Officials drilled at the former Virginia Air National Guard site in early November 2017 as part of a Department of Defense study of the potential release of PFAS from the site. (Courtesy Amec Foster Wheeler/DOD)

At Wednesday’s meeting, EPA officials told the Citizen they weren’t familiar with the DoD’s specific testing at the airport or, more generally, what specific notification steps federal agencies are required to take after they have identified the presence of such chemicals but said they would check and provide that information.

Although nearly all of the more than 250 private wells tested by the county showed levels of PFAS safely below the EPA’s health advisory level of 70 parts per trillion, DEQ officials also began a series of tests of, surface water, sediment and fish tissue in various nearby spots to ascertain where the chemicals might have traveled and how long they’ve been there. The agency published its Middle Chickahominy PFAS Study in December 2022, showing that PFAS levels exceeding 20 parts per trillion were found in a number of locations in Eastern Henrico.

Unlike EtO, PFAS do not break down over time.

Some residents Wednesday expressed ongoing concerns about PFAS. One suggested that since the chemicals do not break down and already exist in the area, they could shift or move and begin contaminating wells that previously tested negative for them. She asked whether the county would continue offering free testing in the future to alleviate those concerns, and she also raised concerns about property values in the area decreasing as a result of the issue.

Henrico Public Utilities Director Bentley Chan said that the county intends to extend county water and sewer lines countywide (it has earmarked $80 million to do so, including $64 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars), with homes on private water supplies in the White Oak Swamp Creek area potentially among the first to be connected to the county’s water supply. Two rounds of testing of Henrico’s public water system have turned up no signs of PFAS, Chan reiterated at Wednesday’s meeting.

Henrico also has provided free water filters to homes in the area on private wells as a temporary measure to alleviate concerns, Chan said.

Officials couldn’t say Wednesday whether the area affected by PFAS might qualify for EPA “Superfund” designation – and thereby gain access to funding for clean-up – as the result of the presence of the chemicals. The EPA is expected to rule in February about whether to classify PFAS as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (also known as Superfund). If it does so, sites affected by PFAS then potentially could receive funding for clean-up from the entities thought to have been responsible for the chemicals presence there.

“We’re going to explore every avenue that we can,” Chan said. “It’s an issue that affects people in our community, my community. We want to do everything that we can to address it, speaking to property values, speaking to the livelihood of people who live in our community.”

A follow-up public meeting for citizens is likely in the future, according to Varina District Supervisor Tyrone Nelson, who helped organize Wednesday's event.